


Blank Space

by ungoodpirate



Series: Art Lovers [4]
Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, M/M, art thief!Kurt, artist!blaine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-24
Updated: 2015-04-24
Packaged: 2018-03-25 14:38:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3814231
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ungoodpirate/pseuds/ungoodpirate
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Four times Kurt almost went to Blaine, plus one time he had to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blank Space

1.

Two weeks out from their trip and from Blaine’s words, and Kurt is still seething. He had relocated himself on the other side city, yet he still felt the heat of Blaine as if were sitting right next to him.

How dare he?  Blaine, making Kurt promise to return, and then confessing his love. Didn’t he know that Kurt was…

Kurt fails to fill in his own words, because too many nasty and self-deprecating ones volunteer themselves first.

Unstable. There. Neutral and true. Kurt’s life was unstable.

He wasn’t meant for a relationship; he wasn’t meant for Blaine. Which was too bad because Blaine was…

Fuck. Kurt shouldn’t be left alone with his own thoughts.

He jabs out a memorized number on his phone and huffs when it goes straight to voicemail. “Elliot. I’m back. Do you have a job?”

Elliot’s off the grid, or not responding to his voicemail, or in police custody, or dead, or in someone else’s custody. Kurt would be more worried except that in all of his time working with him, it’s always been the first two. He disappears easily as water downstream when he wants to. Kurt, along with everyone else, only knows where Elliot is when Elliot wants him to know.

But that leaves Kurt rudderless, except for petty theft, which is only so time-demanding and fulfilling. Elliot’s the biggest switchboard on the East coast, connecting sellers to buyers to professionals. The best scores always go through him, for a cut, but there are worse deals.

So he puts on a spring-weight jacket – knee length – sunglasses and scarf for effect, and takes a walk, then the subway, then a taxi, then a little longer walk. It’s not an accident he ends up on the sidewalk outside of Blaine’s building, craning his neck upward and counting over the windows the right apartment.

His phone buzzes in his pocket. He lifts it to his ear. “Hello.”

“Do I have a job for you? I have _the_ job.”

 

2.

Kurt picks up a hoodie left across a couch in the student union and tugs his over his clothes. He mattes down his hair over his forehead; he’s always been told that’s made him look younger. He silently thanks a non-deity for the rain which makes him seem even more pathetic.

He waits until he sees a campus security guard pass the door and starts knocking frantically. They come over, flashlight lit, and he grimaces through the glass door.

“This building’s closed,” she yells.

“I left my tablet,” Kurt says. “My entire paper’s in there. It’s due tomorrow.”

The guard eyes him up and down. Kurt curls in his shoulders to make himself look shorter, thinner, less confidant.

“Where?”

“In the gallery.” The senior art show was earlier, the guard would know this, so Kurt doesn’t say it. Let people imagine the details of the alibi for you.

 The guard lets him in, walks him to the gallery, and goes to check the lost and found. Kurt surveys the room with quick eyes, until they land on what he seeks: Blaine’s pieces.

Kurt recognizes the style, and his own portrait first. Followed is the series Blaine spoke about creating. They’re all good piece; Kurt knows Blaine’s mother and brother from photos in Blaine’s apartment. The others are a mystery to him.

The last, though, the last is Blaine’s self-portrait. Kurt sucks in a sharp breathe. It’s the eyes, wide and shaded dark, staring out at any viewer, at Kurt.

“Any luck,” the guard calls from the doorway a few minutes later. Kurt slips a tablet out from under the hoodie, holds it out with a chagrined smile. “Found it.”

The guard escorts him out of the gallery, out the building, suggests Kurt be more careful and ‘hey, you know you can back stuff up on this thing called a cloud now’ and never even notices the blank space where a portrait was when they walked in.

 

3.

By pure coincidence, Blaine’s eating in the exact same café Kurt had chosen in Little Italy. Kurt almost spits out his espresso when he catches sight of the parted black hair, the colorful polo, and the compact body he’s so familiar with.

Kurt sinks back in his chair as Blaine gets into line at the counter. This is an exposed beams kind of place, so Kurt has a shadow to sink into. Plus, he always sits with his back to the wall with eyes on the door.

Blaine could turn around and spot him any second. Kurt unfolds a newspaper left behind by another patron, lifts it so it obscures half his face but can still peer over it. Although… Blaine isn’t the most observant. He has an artist’s eye, not that thief’s.

Or… Kurt could go to him. This could be fate directing them together if Kurt believed in fate.

He didn’t.

Blaine laughs, being flirty-nice with the waitress, and the melodic tone carries to Kurt’s ear more clearly than a favorite song. Kurt tilts his head, straining to pick up Blaine’s exact tone and precise words – so he can compare them to his memories and daydreams

Kurt isn’t naïve, like Blaine, believing a relationship would work between them. He also isn’t naïve enough to trick himself into thinking he doesn’t have a thundering heart full of intense feelings for Blaine, more than he’s ever shared with anyone. Perhaps it’s even love.

Blaine sits at a small table by the front window with Asian woman about his age. Kurt recognizes her from Blaine’s portrait series. A good friend then.

Kurt waits out Blaine, ordering extras he’s not interested in just to keep the table. He owes the waitress quite the tip after Blaine leaves. He’s exhausted, too, in a way he didn’t expect from just sitting and peaking over a newspaper.

Perhaps it was how he had sat all muscles tensed, ready to flee. Or worse, fly to Blaine of his own volition. Staying had been the hardest action of all.

Kurt owes a favor to Blaine: to see him once more. Kurt will keep this. Not a thief’s honor but a lover’s, as if that was any more trustworthy. After, he will cut Blaine loose for good. It would be like performing an appendectomy on himself, sans anesthetic, but the fact that Kurt’s making organ analogies about Blaine means Kurt has already let him too close.

Then Kurt would leave New York. He likes the city, but he usually doesn’t stay settled in one place for long. Pulling too many jobs in one place attracted law enforcement attention, and the feds would hone in on his signature.

Kurt finishes the last coffee, and he’s jittery from too much caffeine. Sure, that’s it.

 

4.

Blaine had never specifically shared his birthday with Kurt, but Kurt knew. All it took was a quick glance at his id when he left his wallet left sitting around. There had been no design when Kurt sought it out, but he memorized and filed it away for an unspecified later.

Today, Kurt awakes, glances at the date on his phone, and is hit over the head with this factoid he had conveniently forgotten. Or was actively avoiding. Whatever.

He’s living off his funds from his last job, but he’ll need more work soon enough. He gets paid in the thousands, but the money never lasts long. With the cut spread between cohorts, his dad’s bills, and his own expensive taste (plus the need to keep a well stocked emergency fund for quick getaways), it’s not that much of a surprise. Even if Kurt pulls off the ‘job of a lifetime’ – a mythic sort of steal that would keep you loaded for life, a job that most criminals spoke about with a religious zeal, although rarely with any specificity, Kurt doubts he would quit the profession while still young and healthy. It’s the rush, after all, that was most fulfilling. Kurt has done what guidance counselors and self-help gurus across the globe recommend; he turned his passion into a career.

What left Kurt antsy are the blank days between the hits, when there’s nothing to plan, no one to con, no one to run from. This day, Blaine’s day, is the worse day for the jones-ing to overcome him. Because there’s one other thing than the stealing and conning that left Kurt paradoxically adrenaline-filled and settled at the same time.

Kurt sighs, turns over in bed, twisted in his sheets. He drums his fingers on his chest as he watches the morning sunlight paint more and more of his ceiling with its glow. He contemplates taking up a nasty habit, smoking or hard drinking perhaps. Something to fill the empty hours. He could do with a vice – he snorts – other than life of crime.

When he finally gets out of bed he takes a long time showering, primping himself, and making a healthy breakfast, but nothing takes as long as he thinks it should. That sets the tone for the whole day, with every mundane chore he fills it with – laundry, grocery shopping, even stopping by his favorite East Side thrift shops. He’s been in one place too long if he has favorite thrift shops.

Kurt leaves a voicemail with Elliot, begging him for something, anything, please, I’m dying of boredom here. The unspoken postscript being, as long as it’s in New York or a surrounding borough _._  

Like six months ago, Kurt wanders the city and ends up exactly where he doesn’t and does want to be. Blaine, a magnet, drawing him in.

It’s just about dusk. He’s wearing too nice an outfit for it, but Kurt scales the fire escape a building over. He hadn’t plan this, thus hadn’t brought anything too stalker-ish with him, like binoculars. He cups his hands around his eyes against the glare of the streetlamp.

It’s Blaine’s birthday, so he’s probably out celebrating. But it’s a weeknight too, so maybe the celebration is pushed off until the weekend. Ah. There he is.

Blaine sits on his couch, eating out of a Chinese food carton, probably watching TV given the direction he faced and his distracted mannerisms.

Kurt aches for this: Blaine in his little daily moments – eating a meal, wiping his mouth with a napkin, picking some trashy reality show on TV.

He leaves, for its unfair for him to see but not be seen, to take little comforts from observing Blaine but paying none of that comfort back in return. It’s not enough anyway. Back in his temporary home, he removes the self-portrait from the false bottom drawer, sets it leaning up against the bedside lamp, and falls asleep staring at the portrait of Blaine by Blaine’s hand. Maybe someday soon Kurt will figure out what he needs and what he can give. Or better yet, to detach himself.

The next day, Elliot returns his phone call and offers a job, though with the caution of a particular level of risk. “Lot of eyes on this one.” Kurt takes it.

 

+1.

 “I didn’t want it to happen this way.” Kurt’s voice is a sobbing whisper. Blaine has to blink into the darkness, until he’s sure Kurt’s more than a ghost. He crouched on Blaine’s bed; it’s a little past two a.m.

Wordless, Blaine reaches out, cups Kurt’s cheek. He tilts into it.

“Kurt,” Blaine says, like a prayer.

“I had to see you,” Kurt says. “I didn’t want it to happen this way. But I promised.”

Blaine shifts up and closed. “Kurt. What’s going on?”

A drip of warmth and wetness hits his finger: a tear.

“Shit.” Kurt ducks his head away, scrubs at his face.

“Hey, hey,” Blaine scoots closer. He drifts his fingers over Kurt’s shoulder – feeling but not grabbing.

Kurt blinks up at the window that Blaine now notices is open, curtain drawn aside. “I was stupid,” Kurt says. “I was sentimental. I stayed, and I let my trail get too hot.”

Blaine aches to kiss Kurt. To embrace him, consume him, but it’s not the moment.

“Please,” Blaine says.

Kurt finally looks him in the eye. “I’m leaving.”

Blaine’s sucked dry. “What?”

“The city, tonight. The country, the next 72 hours.”

“Where?”

“Europe.”

“How long?”

“I don’t know.” Which sounds an awful lot like forever, or at least a really long time.

It’s a testament to how much Blaine’s considered and reconsidered similar representations of this situation. Since graduation he has been stuck. An artist without his muse. Nothing about Kurt is what Blaine thought he wanted until he met him. Kurt is royal purple, blood orange, shimmering crimson in a world of earth tones and steel gray. Blaine never knew he could want so much.

“Take me with you.”

Blaine’s flinch-ready for rejection. Kurt brushes a sleep-strayed curl behind Blaine’s ear, wearing a small and vulnerable smile. He blinks and looks Blaine in the eye. He swallows down whatever he’s fighting.

 “Okay.”


End file.
